Creslin

ks3523, I think that just about everyone spends more time studying Quant than anything else, so your experience will likely not be any different. I don't know if you have the OG or not but it has a lot of good Quant problems to practice. You might need to review the fundamental Quant concepts though (I know I did! :)) if I remember right, I used the GMAT for Dummies book for basic Quant review.

Prasdude, When I initially read the question I chose A, though I agree that it is an awkward sentence, I think it's the most correct one. I did not choose E because I believe it has a misplaced modifier. The sentence in E is: More than all the North American Lakes combined, Siberia's Lake Baikal, with more than 300 rivers draining into it, holds 20 percent of the world's fresh water. The problem here is that the clause "More than all the North American Lakes combined" should ideally modify the WATER in Lake Baikal, not the lake itself. It makes no sense when it modifies the lake itself. For example, consider the following two sentences... Longer than any other mammal, the giraffe is able to reach the highest tree leaves. Longer than any other mammal, the giraffe's neck is able to reach the highest tree leaves. The first sentence is incorrect because "Longer than any other mammal" should modify the giraffe's neck as opposed to just the giraffe. Same principle with how "More than all the North American lakes combined" should modify the water in Lake Baikal and not the lake itself. A is structured kind of weird, but I think that it is correct. KillGMAT has a good explanation.

David, Your advice is much appreciated, thanks so much! Also, I'm doing Kung-Fu so I think I should be clear there :)! Josh

Hi rrgmat, Here's some advice that I posted in another forum about verbal. I used to be horrible at RC, but I wound up doing really well on the GMAT, so hopefully it can help you too!

ssky, I wouldn't procrastinate your date too much, I think that you want to take the GMAT early enough so that you can retake it if you don't do well. Knowing that I could retake the GMAT if I bombed it really helped to calm my nerves on D-day.

Hi David, First off, thank you so much for taking the time to answer our questions. I was hoping that you could evaluate my profile for top B-schools such as HBS, Stanford, and Wharton, and address some of the concerns I have. I'll try to keep everything organized... Demographic: Domestic, White, from Maryland (USA) Education: Bachelor's in Computer Science from Univ. Maryland Baltimore County Graduated in 2003 with 3.55 GPA GMAT: 750 Q 48, V 45 -- AWA 6.0 Work: IT Specialist for the Social Security Administration (SSA) for about 4 years. Goal/Why and MBA: I want to eventually become a senior manager in an IT department, preferably public sector such as SSA. I have found my job at SSA very rewarding because I know that the work I do in IT makes literally over one hundred thousand SSA workers more efficient. I really feel that SSA does something positive for milllions of Americans that need help, but I feel that I could make even more of a difference if I were managing IT as opposed to just being IT. To do this, I will need business skills, and that is where an MBA comes in. Extra-Currics: Martial arts for 5 or 6 years. Guitar for 4 years. "Wow" factors: Instrumental in implementing a new software deployment technology at SSA which deploys and manages applications on over one hundred thousand computers. Served as a mentor for two new employees after I was at SSA for only a year. My proteges were very successful, and became capable of working independently very quiickly. They continue to be successful today. Concerns: I need three letters of rec. for HBS, but I've only worked at SSA since I've graduated. Is it a mistake to get all of my letters from my superiors at SSA? I failed Calculus the first time I took it in Under-grad (1999). Should I account for this somewhere in my application by pointing out an upward trend in grades? Will the adcom care about this? I don't want to draw attention to it if I shouldn't... I went to undergrad for 5 years instead of 4. Will this be an issue? Even though I served as a mentor at SSA, I'm worried that I will be in trouble because my position is a technical position, not a managerial one. Will this lack of managerial experience really hurt me? Thank you so much for your help! Josh

Congrats rawjosh! :)

Prasdude, Thanks for the congratulations, and as for a timing strategy... When I first started taking practice tests, I was ALWAYS running out of time on the verbal section. It seemed like I was taking way too long on the RC questions. I never came up with a concrete time management strategy however, when I actually took the GMAT, I finished the verbal with 10 minutes to spare. I think that the key was just doing tons of practice questions beforehand, but I did have a few "Aha!" moments when I was preparing. Here is the best advice I can give for time management in the respective categories... SC: Practice, practice, practice. There are a lot of stupid little idioms like "not only...but also" that you will only learn through practice. That said, POE can really help here. Most test prep books will tell you to find the WRONG answers instead of finding the right answers. So instead of trying to find the best sentence and picking it, just read a sentence, look for something obviously wrong in it, and then cross its letter (A-E) off on your noteboard. Once you cross it off you never have to look at it again, provided that you were correct in crossing it off. CR: Sometimes I read one of the answers to a CR question and I know its the right answer without even reading the other choices. In these cases, I have never been incorrect. If you feel absolutely certain that one of the CR choices is correct, then just pick it and don't bother deliberating. Time is precious. Just be sure that you're sure. If its asking for something that most weakens a representative sample argument, and one of the choices completely invalidates the sample that the argument is predicated on, then it must be the right choice. Also, learning the different kinds of arguments you will encounter (i.e. rep. sample, cause and effect, analogy, etc...) can greatly help you save time. If you recognize an argument as a cause and effect argument, then you will instantly know what you need to look for to strengthen or weaken it (something that further solidifies the cause as the only possible effect, or something that presents other possible causes for the effect). RC: This is the big one that people waste time on, and ironically, I've observed that a lot of people waste time on RC by trying to save time. Whatever you do, don't just skim through the passage thinking that you will save time by not reading it thoroughly. If you do this, you're going to wind up having no idea what the passage is about, and then reading it piecemeal as you go through the questions. Read the passage thoroughly; take short notes on every paragraph so that you will always know where to refer for each respective question; and whatever you do, don't start thinking about all the time you're wasting while you're reading the passage! I believe that if you do this, you will find the questions much easier to answer.

Samsung, Sure thing, here is some advice for verbal that I wrote in another thread:

Hi nerrad, You are correct that the AWA is not nearly as important as the GMAT, but I would not reccommend totally ignoring the AWA. The AWA is fairly easy to prepare for. If you just write two or three argument essays and two or three issue essays ahead of time then the AWA is a piece of cake. Also, I think that a lot of people that don't prepare for the AWA freak out after bombing the AWA and then do worse on the rest of the GMAT. If you do well on the AWA, it will put you in a good mindset for the rest of the test.

Krovvidy, Thanks :). Russty, Thanks, and I put in about 5 hours of study per day for about two months. Some days I obsessed and did more, other days I didn't study at all, but for the most part I remained consistent. Personally, I always like steady non-obsessive study better than studying in bursts. I feel like I retain the information much better when I don't procrastinate and then cram. I had a LOT of books for math. The OG is the most useful. I also used GMAT for Dummies in the beginning, and the PR math book. Kaplan 800 was good for math too. I bought the Kaplan CD book later into my studying but I didn't use it that much. Their CAT tests are real hard and can be confidence killers, I would reccommend avoiding them and sticking with the GMATPrep tests. And also, I have no freaking idea how I did it as well, the whole time I was taking the test I kept thinking "yeah I'm getting a 600" lol :).

I would say that the verbal difficulty is more or less on par with the OG. If you can do all the stuff in there, then you should do good on the GMAT. The quant was tough, like I said in my above post I felt like I missed a lot of questions. There were some weird geometry problems on there that I had trouble with. I guess the best I can say is to try to do a balanced review in your last month with respect to quant. Don't just focus on the really hard tricky problems because you might wind up missing an easier problem because you didn't review for it.

Krovvidy, I agree wth everyone else when they say that you could definitely get 750ish if you wanted to. You're killer at quant, you get a lot of the questions on the forum that I can't solve! As for verbal, I think that you can definitely nail it if you focus on it. I was crappy at grammar when I started my review, but when I took the GMAT, my verbal score was in the 98th percentile,. I guess my advice would be... SC -- Do every question in the OG. Even if you get the question correct, make sure that you read the explanation and understand the grammatical concepts that are being tested. You should be able to not only use your "ear" to pick the right sentence, but also be able to tell what is "wrong" gramatically with the wrong choices. CR -- I was strong here to start with so I didn't study it much, but my technique was always to mentally separate the argument into its components. The arguments are always the argument, the evidence, and the assumption. You should be able to easily recognize the argument and the evidence with a little practice. Don't worry about the assumption unless the argument specifically asks for it. Practice this technique on a bunch of questions. RC -- I always take as long as I need to understand the first paragraph. Once you understand the first paragraph, the rest will flow. Take short notes on every paragraph. I never refer to my notes, but the act of writing them helps me retain the information. Anyway, I think your score is really good, but I know you can do better if you want.

Thanks somu, I just got back from the test. I got a 750 :)!!! I posted my story in the Just Finished the GMAT forum.

Well I just got back from my GMAT and I got a 750 [w00t]!!! I'm pretty ecstatic right now. I used A LOT of books in my prep, but I'm just going to list the ones that were most useful to me. The OG is invaluable, the material in there is definitely reflected in the exam. It alone though is not enough because it has good questions but its kind of lacking in the fact that it doesn't really teach you how to do the problems well. I liked Kaplan 800 a lot as well, it's pretty good with teaching you concepts, but beware, because the problems in there aren't nearly as reflective of the real GMAT as the problems in the OG are. Here are some scores from practice tests that I took: After about 1 week of review... GMAT for dummies paper test - 630 After much review Really old paper GMAT test that I bought from MBA.com - 750 GMATPrep CAT 1 - 630 The first CAT really depressed me, I thought that it was A LOT harder than the old GMAT paper test. Much more review and OG... Kaplan CAT 1 - 630 (This test was brutal and weird, I don't reccommend them) GMAT CAT 2 - 760 GMAT CAT 1 again - 750 So the GMATPrep CATS are definitely the most accurate indicators. As for advice when you take the GMAT I would say... Even though the AWA isn't super important you should devote some time to it. You take the Quant right after the AWA, and if you struggle with the AWA, you might not be in the best mindset for the Quant. I felt like I got A LOT of Quant questions wrong, but I didn't let it freak me out. I think that you can actually get lots of questions wrong and still get a high score because of how the CAT works. Don't freak out if you feel like you're bombing, just stay the course and do your best. So that's my story, I was out of the academic world for 4 years, and I managed to do really well with about 2.5 months of study. If I can do it, you can too :)! EDIT: One thing I wanted to add. Once I got comfortable with the material I started to come to this forum and tried to answer just about every question posted. The questions on this forum are usually pretty tough. If you can do like 80% of them, you're probably in good shape. I would reccommend lurking this forum for questions after you think you are ready. You will also learn some stuff here that isn't in the books. Also...learn how to factor numbers into their prime factors! You'll probably never use this outside of the GMAT, but it is INVALUABLE for the GMAT.